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By JOHN O’CONNOR, AP Political Writer
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Gov. J.B. Pritzker was scheduled to present an annual spending plan Wednesday not amid the usual pomp but to a mostly empty chamber during an onslaught of winter weather in Illinois.
With inflation soaring, Pritzker was readying an address with plans to suspend or offer rebates for taxes on groceries, gasoline and property as a way to relieve consumers. It’s an official speech prescribed by law but amounts to an unofficial opening to his campaign for a second term.
He will propose a $45.4 billion general funds budget for the year that begins July 1, a 3.4% decrease from the current year, administration staff members told reporters in a morning briefing. It includes billions of dollars of debt reduction, giving Pritzker leeway to try to ease the inflation pinch.
The 57-year-old Democrat wants to lift for one year the 1% sales tax on groceries, freeze the motor fuel tax that goes toward road building at 39.2 cents per gallon, and offering a rebate of up to $300 dollars equal to the property tax credit available on income taxes.
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Pritzker believes he’s on solid ground because of a stronger economy and his administration’s attention to past debt. Staff members told reporters in a morning briefing that by June 2024, $898 million in past-due bills for the employee health insurance program will be eliminated and what in recent years has been a monstrous backlog of bills due state vendors — $7 billion on Wednesday — will be reduced to $2.7 billion.
Each proposal would normally be a partisan applause line, but the snowstorm forced legislative leaders to cancel lawmakers’ three scheduled work days this week, including what typically would be a joint session in the House chamber.
The governor planned to make the most of the occasion, choosing to speak on the same Old State Capitol stage where Abraham Lincoln worked as a representative and then gave the electrifying “House Divided” speech to begin one of the more critical campaigns of his career.
It was another challenge for the billionaire philanthropist and equity investor, who took office at the end of a bitter budget battle and soon was saddled with the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on Illinois.
Pritzker’s review of his first three years in office is portrayed as a time of renewed fiscal discipline, with balanced budgets, billions of dollars of paid-down debt and favorable notice from credit-rating agencies.
This followed years of partisan rancor between Pritzker’s Republican predecessor and legislative Democrats that forestalled any budget in 2015 and 2016, leaving in its wake debt and devastation to social services.
In 2018, he beat GOP forerunner Bruce Rauner in what became the second-most expensive gubernatorial race in U.S. history. Financing nearly all of it — more than $200 million — were on one side Pritzker and on the other, near-billionaire Rauner with support from the state’s richest man, Citadel CEO Ken Griffin.
Griffin has pledged up to $300 million to defeat Pritzker, and a slate expected to win his support has been assembled, led by Richard Irvin, Aurora’s first Black mayor, who announced his candidacy more than two weeks ago but has yet to make a public appearance.
Follow Political Writer John O’Connor at https://twitter.com/apoconnor
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